Uncensored

by Zachary R. Wood

  When the food came, Devon ate as if someone were going to take his food away if he didn’t eat it fast enough. In between bites, he started performing go-go beats on the dinner table while the rest of us were talking. People looked on with disdain.

  I was embarrassed, but I felt powerless to intervene. I didn’t know Devon well enough then to make eye contact with him or to gesture subtly in some way that suggested he act a little more appropriately. The best I could do while we were there was to direct the group’s attention away from him and onto me, so I tried to distract everyone by engaging them in a conversation about what made me decide to come to Bullis.

  After that evening, Devon was the butt of many jokes, all made behind his back. No one said anything derisive to his face because he was from a rough neighborhood, much like mine, where looking at someone the wrong way could get you killed. Over the next year, I got to know Devon a little better, and though we were never close, I came to respect his commitment to the sport of football. He probably worked as hard as any athlete I knew at Bullis.

  At the next football game, I finally got some playing time. I wanted to compete, to prove to my teammates, my coaches, and myself that I could hit with reckless abandon and make a big play. But I had aggression without technique, and before I knew it, I was injured.

  During the second quarter, a player from the other team had the ball and was running toward me. I attempted to tackle him and got an assist from another guy on my team. He got his hands on the ball, and in the tumult my finger got caught inside his helmet. As he drove through the pile, my left hand was fractured in two places, and the bone in my middle finger suffered a clean break. For the next couple of weeks I had a cast covering my entire hand. I was done with football for the season, and I was supposed to go to physical therapy, but I could barely afford one appointment.

  Just like that, everything went from challenging to damn near impossible. With a cast on one hand, it took longer to shower and dress myself. It also took twice as long for me to type up assignments, and even my commute now held an extra layer of tension. Some of the guys on the bus knew my face by then. “Aye, yo, you a bitch nigga!” they said when they saw my cast. “You let those niggas stomp you, Moe?”

  From time to time, guys on the Metro saw the cast and tried to punk me. Other times, they wanted me to empty my wallet or give up my seat. More often than not, I was more afraid than I would have liked to admit. But every so often, I’m not sure what happened. I would feel so stressed. So frustrated. So tense and fed up that I’d almost stop caring. On those days, I was just waiting for someone to fuck with me, because I’d rather die than allow my circumstances to shatter my resolve.

  Another thing that happened frequently on the bus that was always hard for me to watch was when black parents hit their kids. I had read the research on how violence begets violence. The history of unrestrained brutality against black people from the time of slavery through Jim Crow up to today has led to a cultural pattern of violence in black communities and even within families. I felt deeply for these parents, who had probably experienced the same thing in their own childhoods. I understood that, by hitting me, even my own mother was just repeating what her father had done to her. But that didn’t make it any easier for me to experience this or witness it, and I knew it was possible to break this cycle because my dad, who had been beaten by his grandfather, never once hit me.

  One night after seeing a particularly disturbing scene on the bus between a mother and her child, I asked my dad about this. “Why do you think your grandfather got mad so easily?” I asked him.

  My dad blew out a big breath and rubbed the smooth top of his head as he looked at the ground. “That was just part of the times back then,” he said.

  “A lot of scholars write about how violence leads to more violence, and how kids who are hit build up anger and resentment that makes them more confrontational,” I told him. My dad wasn’t one to read scholarly journals, but he understood a lot of things intuitively. He observed the world around him but didn’t often say much out loud about all the things he’d noticed. “You never hit me and Nicole,” I continued. “But most dads in this neighborhood whup their kids. Do you think that’s because of your grandfather?”

  My dad just shook his head and looked off in the distance. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “I just never wanted to do that with my kids.”

  Without football taking up my time, I threw myself deeper into my academic and social life at Bullis. I joined Model UN and started tutoring other students after school. No matter how much of my own work I had to do, I always made time to help other people. I liked how it felt to be known as someone other people could count on. About halfway through the year, I realized that I would be able to help more people if I tutored younger students in other subjects, so I signed up to tutor students between grades six and nine in any subject they needed help with.

  I poured myself into every interaction, channeling all my anxiety and frustration into being present and dependable and having more bandwidth than many would imagine possible. Part of this was a healthy distraction. I wasn’t afraid of home anymore the way I had been with my mom, but I still didn’t look forward to being there. It wasn’t a relaxing or enriching environment. School was the only place where I could not only better myself but also work to better others. That was rewarding.

  Ultimately, I liked the look on my teacher’s face when I handed in an extra essay I’d written based on a simple comment he or she had made. It made me feel good about myself, like I was more than just a kid from a rough part of DC with a mentally ill mom and a hole over his head who showered in a soiled, rotting bathroom every day.

  Most of my friendships at Bullis started with my demonstrating intelligence in conversation or helping another student with a paper or assignment. Even with the top students in the grade, I wasn’t satisfied unless I could teach them something; until they saw me the same way the rest of the kids at Bullis saw them. One kid named Todd was possibly the smartest and definitely the most competitive student in my grade. He was a math genius and a bit of an intellectual bully who intimidated some of the other kids at Bullis.

  The first few times I spoke to Todd I could tell he was evaluating me by asking me a series of questions: “What do your parents do?” “Where did you go to school before this?” He even challenged me to solve some complicated math problems that I hardly understood, just to prove his dominance. Then he pulled up a video from Saturday Night Live on his phone that showed black people acting “irate and out of control” and said, “I know you know what this is like.”

  Todd brought out my competitive instincts in a way that no other student had. He had every advantage; his family was wealthy, and he lived eight minutes from the school. And yet he assumed that anyone who didn’t achieve as much as he did was simply inferior. Freshman year, he petitioned the principal to have the scholarship kids who had been brought to Bullis to play sports (most of whom were black) kicked out of the school, claiming that they were “a different kind of stupid.”

  When I visited his house, I began to understand where these attitudes came from. I saw the conditions under which he did his work, and they couldn’t have been more different from mine. On the side of Todd’s house, there was a lavish solarium where he liked to hang out, with a sloped roof, hardwood floors, and half a dozen comfortable chaise lounges. During the day, the room was filled with sunlight. And as soon as the sun went down, recessed lights automatically turned on, bouncing luminous rays off the ceiling’s glass panes. Every time I was in there, I thought about the electrical problems in my grandmother’s house and how hard it was to find a spot with enough light to read by.

  Todd had every possible convenience and even luxury at his fingertips, and I saw that his vision of meritocracy and personal responsibility came precisely from his own privileged lifestyle. He’d never experienced obstacles or hardships. His experiences taught h
im that being smart and working hard got him everything he wanted, so he believed that anyone in a bad position was there because of innate character flaws rather than circumstances.

  I realized then that privilege breeds that sort of demeanor, an aura that is immune to changing circumstances. Todd had never felt the pressure I did every single day to adapt or pretend. Throughout his life, he would rarely, if ever, have to revise the parameters of his comportment to appeal to people, and when he did, he could afford to barely change his behavior.

  What I wanted to say to Todd was, “Talk to me about personal responsibility when you face disadvantage after disadvantage,” but I took a different tack. The other thing I’d learned from being at his house was that his political beliefs came straight from his dad. Around the dinner table, his parents talked about what a shame it was that they were sending him to a private school where there were so many “inferior” athletic scholarship students. Todd hadn’t studied these issues the way I had. He saw them only from his own perspective, which had been entirely informed by his dad’s opinions. When I discovered these intellectual weaknesses, I didn’t hesitate to take advantage of them, using Todd’s own tricks against him.

  “I see that you have some strong opinions about race,” I told him after dinner as we hung out in the solarium. “But you seem oblivious to some historical facts.” Going from one source to another, I forced Todd to admit to the holes in his knowledge. “Do you agree that there is a relationship between race and wealth?” I asked him. When he said yes, I asked, “So what studies are you familiar with on the intersection of race and economics? What research informs your opinion?” Then I broke down the information in the texts he’d never read, forcing him to see that he couldn’t compete because he hadn’t read the relevant literature.

  It took time, but eventually, this technique worked. Todd was so competitive that he couldn’t accept the fact that there were things I knew more about than he did, so he started to let me teach him. We spent hours talking about politics, race, economics, and affirmative action. I got him to read the work of Cornel West and other scholars I admired, and little by little Todd’s beliefs actually began to change. The next time I was at his house for dinner, Todd brought up Cornel West and his dad’s response was, “What is he, just another black professor who studies race?”

  “No, Dad,” Todd said angrily. “He actually has a lot of interesting things to say.” As Todd and his dad continued arguing around their custom-made triangular kitchen table, I couldn’t help but smile to myself. There were so many days when I was sick of working so hard and doing all these mental gymnastics just to differentiate myself. I was angry and frustrated all the time about the ways that my life was so much harder than my peers’ just because of the situation I was born into. And on top of that, I had to achieve more than they did just to be seen as an equal. I had to possess knowledge that went beyond what we studied for a history test. I had to read more than my classmates and prove that my mind was of value, because I understood that my mind was what had gotten me into Bullis in the first place.

  This pressure was almost unbearable at times. Yet I knew that if I wanted to attend a top college and be successful, these were the same pressures I’d be facing throughout my life. Would it have been nice to go to school with people who were more culturally aware and sensitive? Sure, it would have spared my feelings. But if my life had taught me anything by then, it was that the world was not concerned with my feelings. I couldn’t hide from racism or insensitivity; I had to learn how to deal with it. The truth is that there was no place I could have gone where race would not have been an issue for me. Hiding from race is not an option for black people in this country. So I had no choice but to confront it head-on by doing everything I could to represent all the things that most people assumed black people couldn’t do.

  My success with someone like Todd gave me hope that if I kept pushing forward, I could actually create positive change, even on an individual level. It motivated me to keep going even during the most difficult times.

  At the end of the school year, each department handed out an award for the best student in that subject, and Mr. Brock selected me to receive the history award. It was a huge honor that I knew would go a long way in setting me apart. Hollis and I also won the election to be co–class presidents for the following year. I finally felt like I was zoned in, focused, and back at the top of my game after the difficult move and transition to DC, yet I remained ever vigilant, not knowing what obstacles were waiting for me around each corner.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Void

  I started my sophomore year at Bullis fired up to do and learn as much as possible. I ran track and was co–class president; served as a student tutor and a student tutor supervisor; was a student ambassador, a peer mentor, and secretary of Model UN; and began attending student leadership conferences every trimester. I was rarely at home. After school, I tutored for as long as I could, helping students with homework, studying, papers, or whatever they needed. Then I stayed and did my own work in the library until it closed. On the weekends, I spent most of my time at my friends’ houses.

  That year I also formed a new friendship. Like me, Drew was one of the few black kids at Bullis who were taken seriously and seen as smart and ambitious, even though Bullis recruited him to play football. Unlike me, Drew’s dad was pretty well-off. His parents were separated, and I hung out with Drew at his mom’s house all the time. She had him make a list of goals for every month, and pretty soon Drew told me that he was basing some of those lists on goals I’d told Drew I was trying to accomplish myself.

  Despite our different backgrounds, Drew understood some things about me that someone like Hollis or James, another friend of mine, could never fully understand. If another student made a racially insensitive joke in class or a disparaging comment about Obama, Drew and I would catch each other’s eye. Sometimes if we saw some of the other black students playing to a stereotype, we looked at each other and knew exactly what we were both thinking.

  Drew, Hollis, Todd, and James were some of the top students in my grade. They didn’t need my help. Yet when I was at their homes I still felt compelled to prove my value. If they had younger siblings, sometimes I helped them with their homework or essays. With the others, I had in-depth intellectual conversations, made frequent book recommendations, or explained aspects of political and economic policy that they were curious about. Basically, I showcased my knowledge, and this enabled me to capture their interest and demonstrate my value to them and their families.

  But sometimes when we hung out, my friends just wanted to relax and have fun. I could do this with Drew a bit more than the others, but even with him, I would usually stay up late reading after he went to sleep. For me, taking it easy was hardly an option. I never forgot what Papa had told me all those years before—the pressures were different for me. James was my Model UN partner. He was naturally very smart and a great intellectual partner in crime. We balanced each other well and at the conferences we attended together, we killed it. The weekend before a conference early in the year, I slept over at his house so that we could work on our opening statement and summation speech together.

  At 8:30 a.m., I woke up, ready to get started. I left the guest room where I slept and walked down the long, wood-paneled hallway to James’s room. He was asleep, but when he heard me come in, James rolled over, looked at me in disbelief, asked, “What are you doing?” and went back to sleep. I sat down at the L-shaped executive desk in the corner of his room and started working, thinking he’d get up soon and join me, but he didn’t wake up until 10:00. By then I was almost done with a draft of the speech. “Let’s go get something to eat,” he said when I showed him the draft.

  James’s dad took us to a local bagel shop. The family owned many homes. Their main residence, where we’d stayed the night before, was in Potomac. We sat at an outdoor table in the Potomac Village courtyard, eating our bagel
s and talking about current events. It was designed to look like a small town or a European village. Bakeries and overpriced markets dotted the square, which was full of local residents enjoying their weekends. Despite the crowds, it was quiet, peaceful.

  During conversations like these, I was always interested to learn more about my friends’ parents and how they saw the world. I tried to remember the minor, seemingly insignificant details people told me and make sure to bring them up the next time I saw them. This tactic was something my mom had taught me. But for her, creating a sense of loyalty was a way of manipulating people, of endearing them to her so that she could use it later to get what she wanted. I drew a fine line between taking the sparks of brilliance in her methods and the way she twisted loyalty to serve her purposes. For me, it was about building rapport and developing a deeper connection with people. If I understood what mattered to them and, more important, why, I was able to more fully engage.

  James’s dad had a wealth of knowledge, and we had great conversations about a variety of topics. He was also a pretty conservative guy, so I was always curious to get his take on electoral politics and the strengths and weaknesses of Romney’s presidential campaign. Other times, we talked about our favorite books and fascinating social scientific theories we’d read about. With other parents and teachers, I discussed everything from climate change to what they did for a living and how they managed their family businesses. While I wanted these families to know that I was smart and well informed, I also wanted to gain as much knowledge and wisdom from them as I could. So I was often just as eager to listen as I was to talk.

  I didn’t have the money to pay for newspaper subscriptions, but I had ways of accessing what I needed. I often got to school early and picked up a teacher’s discarded copy of the newspaper, and I figured out how to read as much free content as possible by strategically viewing the maximum number of articles on each device before hitting the pay wall. Comments like the one from Todd’s dad, writing off Cornel West as “just another black professor who studies race,” were always at the back of my mind. So while I was passionate about issues of race, and debated them, I made sure to be armed with plenty of other artillery.